How to install ED on Linux using Wine [EXPERIMENTAL, NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED]

I use Debian unstable and steam with the latest proton. Navi graphics all set to high and ultra. X52 pro works fully.

After following the wiki to install dotnet40, things went smooth and the game is running fine. I honestly don't know why fdev wouldn't make the effort to change the launcher to be compatible with vanilla mono... So out of the box steamplay would work. It's not like the launcher is complicated. Linux ftw
 
After following the wiki to install dotnet40, things went smooth and the game is running fine. I honestly don't know why fdev wouldn't make the effort to change the launcher to be compatible with vanilla mono... So out of the box steamplay would work. It's not like the launcher is complicated. Linux ftw

Well the good news is work has began on porting WPF in to wine-mono. Once that is complete, hopefully dotnet40 will no longer be required.

The bug report tracking this is here:

Source code is here:
 
On OpenSuSE Leap 15.1 I used to start Elite from within a bash shell.
Then I decided to make things more elegant and now I start Elite by simply pressing on an icon on the Panel at the bottom of the screen.
This icon is connected to the executable file on /home/vaessen/bin/Elite, the contents of which are:

cd /home/vaessen/Steam_oud/steamapps/common/Elite\ Dangerous
wine64 EDLaunch.exe /novr /steam

As no bash shell is opened, where does the system get its environment variables WINE and WINEPREFIX from?
How does it know that wine is installed in /home/vaessen/ed-wine, which is not a default place?
To be clear: there is no directory /home/vaessen/.wine, which would be the default wine directory.
 
Last edited:
I'm running Elite Dangerous in - wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) - sometimes when starting the client the screen goes black then just stays black. If I have netflix running on the other monitor it runs for a bit and then stops and then in either case the monitors turn off and say "no signal" and I have to hit the reset button as the system is unresponsive.

Has anyone else experienced this? It didn't used to do it in Proton/Steamplay.
 
I'm running Elite Dangerous in - wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) - sometimes when starting the client the screen goes black then just stays black. If I have netflix running on the other monitor it runs for a bit and then stops and then in either case the monitors turn off and say "no signal" and I have to hit the reset button as the system is unresponsive.

Has anyone else experienced this? It didn't used to do it in Proton/Steamplay.
Does not sound familiar.
 
I'm running Elite Dangerous in - wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) - sometimes when starting the client the screen goes black then just stays black. If I have netflix running on the other monitor it runs for a bit and then stops and then in either case the monitors turn off and say "no signal" and I have to hit the reset button as the system is unresponsive.

Has anyone else experienced this? It didn't used to do it in Proton/Steamplay.

Also running wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) in Arch.

I don't get the permanent black screen. But it's kind of a gamble as to whether the game launches or not. For me, it seems to be related to this WINE version handing over input control to the client.

In order to get the client launched fully, I have to first click on a terminal or some other app window (I have a dual-monitor layout) in order to keep the game client out of input focus. Then once it's fully up and running, is where the gamble begins.

A lot of times, when I click into the game client to give it input focus, the client immediately freezes, and then crashes with a crash report window. Other times, I get away with it and from then on can play the game and click out of and back into focus at will. I have to unfocus the game client window twice, as it seems to want to grab input focus twice (so basically I just keep clicking on a terminal window until the client is up and running.)

If I don't click out of the game client upon launching it, the screen goes black for a bit, then I get the game crash dialogue.

Also the level of success I have with starting the game depends on the desktop environment. The simpler the environment the better;

KDE Plasma - mostly fails to run
MATE desktop - more likely to run than KDE but still mostly crashes
LXDE - more likely to run but still can crash
A plain Openbox session - most success

It could be that your black screen freezes are a similar type of problem I'm encountering.

When you encounterr the black screen, do you try to alt-tab to a different window? That might bring the picture back alive.

Regds.
 
Also running wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) in Arch.

I don't get the permanent black screen. But it's kind of a gamble as to whether the game launches or not. For me, it seems to be related to this WINE version handing over input control to the client.

In order to get the client launched fully, I have to first click on a terminal or some other app window (I have a dual-monitor layout) in order to keep the game client out of input focus. Then once it's fully up and running, is where the gamble begins.

A lot of times, when I click into the game client to give it input focus, the client immediately freezes, and then crashes with a crash report window. Other times, I get away with it and from then on can play the game and click out of and back into focus at will. I have to unfocus the game client window twice, as it seems to want to grab input focus twice (so basically I just keep clicking on a terminal window until the client is up and running.)

If I don't click out of the game client upon launching it, the screen goes black for a bit, then I get the game crash dialogue.

Also the level of success I have with starting the game depends on the desktop environment. The simpler the environment the better;

KDE Plasma - mostly fails to run
MATE desktop - more likely to run than KDE but still mostly crashes
LXDE - more likely to run but still can crash
A plain Openbox session - most success

It could be that your black screen freezes are a similar type of problem I'm encountering.

When you encounterr the black screen, do you try to alt-tab to a different window? That might bring the picture back alive.

Regds.

The system freezes completely when I get the black screen. It's just a matter of time and Alt-Tab only accelerates the time to freeze. I can't even Alt-F2

I suspect it may actually be my graphics card on it's last legs. Which is fine. I've been waiting for an excuse to buy a GTX1660ti 6gb. I can't justify the spend while my current card still works though.

Your crashes I do get. They are simple crashes that happen once in 10 starts and I just deal with it. I do send the data dump to FD. Hopefully it will somehow indicate to them that I'm a linux user and that there are more of us than they think.

I use Mint 19 with the XFCE desktop. I found that the compositing on Cinnamon was not good and used to produce blurry text that would come into focus when a mouse pointer was over quite often. If I had the "blurry desktop" then Elite would crash at every launch. I'd have to reboot a few times to get a stable desktop and then Elite would launch. This could again point to my graphics card being on it's way out.

Fingers crossed for bad hardware. I've run the "SuperPosition" benchmark program for linux and I get no issues but I do know that it's only OpenGL and doesn't necessarily tax the card in the same way that ED might when it's using Vulkan to simulate the DX11 stuff.
 
Also running wine-5.0-rc4 (Staging) in Arch.

I don't get the permanent black screen. But it's kind of a gamble as to whether the game launches or not. For me, it seems to be related to this WINE version handing over input control to the client.

In order to get the client launched fully, I have to first click on a terminal or some other app window (I have a dual-monitor layout) in order to keep the game client out of input focus. Then once it's fully up and running, is where the gamble begins.

A lot of times, when I click into the game client to give it input focus, the client immediately freezes, and then crashes with a crash report window. Other times, I get away with it and from then on can play the game and click out of and back into focus at will. I have to unfocus the game client window twice, as it seems to want to grab input focus twice (so basically I just keep clicking on a terminal window until the client is up and running.)

If I don't click out of the game client upon launching it, the screen goes black for a bit, then I get the game crash dialogue.

Also the level of success I have with starting the game depends on the desktop environment. The simpler the environment the better;

KDE Plasma - mostly fails to run
MATE desktop - more likely to run than KDE but still mostly crashes
LXDE - more likely to run but still can crash
A plain Openbox session - most success

It could be that your black screen freezes are a similar type of problem I'm encountering.

When you encounterr the black screen, do you try to alt-tab to a different window? That might bring the picture back alive.

Regds.
Exactly the same issues here with Proton 4.11-12 on Void with i3wm. Sometimes the game successfully launches even fully in focus, but switching focus to somewhere else helps dramatically.
 
No problems for me in Debian unstable, using steam vr beta and current proton with amd 5700xt.

I will say though, to do 90fps, you definitely want to make sure your kernel is full preempt and @ a 1000hz timer. I was consistently only hitting around 14ms with 300hz voluntary preempt with my kernel built for compiling performance.... But simply changing to a desktop config allows sub 11ms. Gpu is only 75c so it still looks like I'm cpu bound more than gpu. But that's to be expected with a software layer converting graphics calls
 
No problems for me in Debian unstable, using steam vr beta and current proton with amd 5700xt.

I will say though, to do 90fps, you definitely want to make sure your kernel is full preempt and @ a 1000hz timer. I was consistently only hitting around 14ms with 300hz voluntary preempt with my kernel built for compiling performance.... But simply changing to a desktop config allows sub 11ms. Gpu is only 75c so it still looks like I'm cpu bound more than gpu. But that's to be expected with a software layer converting graphics calls

That's really good information. I was really hoping that VR would work in linux for ED. I'm going to be using an Oculus Rift eventually. I have abandoned steam for playing Elite and don't want to be bound to steam for using VR in any case ( though I may be misunderstanding the way Steam VR works. If so then DM me how it actually works so we're not OT on this thread ).
 
Anyone had any luck or know how in getting two clients up and running? I can launch either account using the copy the edlauncher.exe trick. However it refuses to start a second client and I'm sure I used to run two clients side by side.
 
Running ED through Pop_OS/Steam/Proton with no real problems.
Can I copy my key bindings from my non-Steam Win10 ED to my Linux PC?
Hunting around I can't seem to find where they would be stored, could it be here "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Elite Dangerous/Products/elite-dangerous-64/ControlSchemes$" ?
Any help would be great
 
Running ED through Pop_OS/Steam/Proton with no real problems.
Can I copy my key bindings from my non-Steam Win10 ED to my Linux PC?
Hunting around I can't seem to find where they would be stored, could it be here "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Elite Dangerous/Products/elite-dangerous-64/ControlSchemes$" ?
Any help would be great
Yeah, absolutely possible. Should copy your С:\Users\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Bindings\Custom.3.0.binds (or whatever .binds file is there) to ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/359320/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Local\ Settings/Application\ Data/Frontier\ Developments/Elite\ Dangerous/Options/Bindings/

Edit: I might be wrong on where the bindings are stored on WIndows, so, uh, disregard that, thanks
 
Last edited:
Running ED through Pop_OS/Steam/Proton with no real problems.
Can I copy my key bindings from my non-Steam Win10 ED to my Linux PC?
Hunting around I can't seem to find where they would be stored, could it be here "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Elite Dangerous/Products/elite-dangerous-64/ControlSchemes$" ?
Any help would be great
They're stored under users/<username>/appdata and so forth (hunt around under local / local low / appdata / application data as I can't remember exactly ). you can copy the file under your profile called "custom.(whatever)" to the appropriate place under the linux installation.. indeed if you copy it to the controll schemes directory and called it "my default keybinds" and change the name in the XML file to "my default keybinds" ED will remember it in the drop down list of available bindings.
 
Thank you both. Had a bit of a headache to start with as it was looking for my EdTracker but as I rarely use it anymore I removed it from my Win10 ED, copied the new bindings across to my Pop_OS installation and after a few simple adjustments, I now have it working fine :)
Just have a small graphic glitch with the galaxy map where you have to click a destination system off where it actually is, I bet this down to the Nvidia drivers Pop_OS uses. Still I'm a happy bunny!
 
If you cannot beat them, join them....

Microsoft News:

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Narayana Nadella, changed the company's direction after becoming CEO. His tenure has emphasized openness to working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple Inc., Salesforce, IBM, and Dropbox. In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns against the Linux operating system, Nadella proclaimed that "Microsoft ❤'s Linux",and in 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member.

Just sounds like Microsoft have started the Embrace phase of their famous Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. Stay skeptical of all the things Microsoft do, I will be happy to eat my words if they prove me wrong.
 
I agree with that. But on the otherhand, parts of Linux are showing up in Windows 10.

The "AllJoyn Router Service" is clearly linux code. As well, improvements to the "Windows Sub-System for Linux" and of course, the Posix sub-system has always been there.

It's amazing how Linux and Windows fought for twenty years yet there is a Windows sub-system in Linux, i.e.proton, wine, and a Linux sub-system in Windows with ssh/bash capabilities. Granted, it may take another twenty years but eventually, the two OS's will be interchangable and in fifty years, may merge into one.
Proton, wine are not windows subsystems in linux they are compatibility layers, very different things. The Linux subsystem for windows is just more examples of "embrace". As for windows and linux merging that will never happen. I will stop talking about this here as it is off topic.
 
Finally I became Triple Elite, Combat Elite being the last and what a bore it is to kill thousands of Thargoid Scouts to get the job done before growing senile.
It proved too much for the system that had been operating without flaw for weeks. When I opened the message board to read what a wonderful guy I am, having attained this status after only 1,5 years, an Olympic Record that without doubt leaves the lesser beings in awe for the rest of eternity, when my promotion to Elite status was displayed in a shining gold logo, the system froze...
 
Last edited:
Hey there. During the past half a year or so, performance of Elite on Steam has been consistently... declining for me. I can't exactly say was it due to NVidia driver updates, or Proton updates, or something else. One noticeable thing though - the compositor, Compton, which has now been renamed Picom, really messes the framerate up now, which it didn't use to do roughly 3 months ago. Without it - decently good 60-90 fps with high-ultra settings; as soon as picom is launched - 30 fps max and constant drops to almost freezing.
If anyone's been experiencing something even remotely similar or has suggestions, I'd gladly hear it
 
Top Bottom